


these brutal hearts will break the night in two

by havisham



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Emotions are dumb and should be hated, M/M, Resurrections ‘R’ Us
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-27
Updated: 2012-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-31 20:17:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/347970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>If you’re looking for love, you can look for the door.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	these brutal hearts will break the night in two

And it’s always like this - boy meets an eccentric billionaire. (That’s code, right there folks, the billionaire is too rich to be crazy.) This billionaire doesn’t _waste time_ just being richer than you or I could ever hope to be though, this billionaire plays _dress up._

He’s surrounded by darkness and shadow, he’s the Batman, don’t you _know_ about him? 

(I can tell by your face that you _do_.)

Anyway, this Bat-billionaire takes an instant shine to the boy. 

“You little son of a — _gun_ ,” he says (he was going to say something else) after he gives a booming laugh that rattles the broken windows, and makes the squatters shift nervously in their place. 

No one _laughs_ in Crime Alley.

The kid scowls, because he’s wise to how this shit goes, okay, he _knows all about it_ , but... 

The batty billionaire doesn’t follow the rules, though, not as they are written. He just writes new ones, because he can, because he doesn’t know how not to. He takes the kid from the mean streets and wraps him up in bright new threads, scrubs out all dirt (except for the places his well-meaning brush couldn’t reach), fixes the kid’s teeth, tries to fix the kid’s way of speaking, to scrub the broad, flat Gotham dialect from his tongue.

Okay. He tries to _fix_ the kid. 

He even adopts the boy, to make him his own. Touching, really. 

(Or does he? Does he also tie him up?)

You never know with these two. 

_Unpredictable_ , both of them. 

(Except when it comes to each other.)

Okay, so, the billionaire puts the boy to work, because you don’t get to be a billionaire just by obeying child-labor laws, are you _kidding_ me.

\+ 

Just so we’re straight here: 

The billionaire  
 _— is Bruce Wayne  
— is Batman._

The kid  
 _— is Jason Todd  
— is Robin. _

Yeah. _Those_ two. 

Their work is night work, flying above their seething, mad city, over thousands of lives bleeding and wasting away, this city isn’t _worth_ saving, most would say, but these two, these two — for want of a better word — _heroes_ beg to differ. They see something that is worth saving. 

What do we know about it? 

Do we _want_ to know what they know? 

Anyway, the kid _loves_ it. He loves the work, he loves Robin, the brightness of it, the sparkle. It gives him _magic_. But it’s a sort of _dark_ magic, all right? The kind where you can land a punch, make a quip and then dance, dance _away_. He loves putting the fear of god into the punks and lowlifes of his city. But he never forgets that his mentor, the Bat, believes he could be one of those punks, one of those lowlifes, easy. And so his kicks are especially hard, his punches especially unforgiving because that’s the best way he knows how to say, _no_. 

(And. _Fuck you_.)

 

\+ 

But. 

The kid dies.

And comes back. He comes _back_. 

And the billionaire - Bruce - he has a hard time accepting this, because, well. While they do live in a universe where this kind of thing isn’t, exactly, _uncommon_ , but you see, the kid, after he died, become something more than some roughneck he’d picked off the streets one night (on a whim). 

He has become _The Good Soldier_ , the fallen comrade, upon whose dead body the Mission rests, a symbol of how the fight goes on, and on, no matter how many good soldiers _fall_. 

(He’s the boy who would never grow up.) 

But Jason, in defiance of all logic (Bruce knows that Jason died, he buried him) has come _back_ , with a mask that’s a an angry red slash across his face, a coat that’s heavy with guns and knives, and helmet that will never not look _dumb_. 

(He doesn’t care.) 

Jason comes back with a knowing grin and twitch in his hips. 

And it’s something Bruce can’t shake off, not as easily as he can shake Jason off — 

And when they fight (and of course they do) — 

It’s to prove that — 

One. He’s _not_ a kid anymore. 

Two. The old man’s got to _understand_ that. 

\+ 

 

But the thing is — the thing they don’t tell you in Resurrections ‘R’ Us — you can’t run on rage and insecurity. 

(At least, not indefinitely.) 

So while he’s burned all his bridges, cutting all his ties (look at the last of ‘em go, what a sight they make), he’s also being pursued, hunted down, brought to ground, and it’s not like he wanted this when he started (a lie), but now that he’s got the big, scary Batman breathing down his neck — and his ribs that might be cracked, his nose that might be broken...

He grins (never a stranger to the sentimental), and his voice shakes and cracks when he says, “Aw, Bruce. You still _care_.” 

And Bruce, the poor slob always did have more money than sense, says, “Never stopped, Jay.” 

 

 

(Jason’s furious, _furious_ , at how happy this makes him.)


End file.
